Thousands of people in Israel witness spinning ‘Catherine Wheel’ in the sky

Thousands of people in Israel, Turkey and Jordan got the shock of their lives yesterday, as they watched a spinning ‘UFO’ performing cartwheels in the sky.

Police in these countries – as well as in Cyprus and Lebanon – were flooded with phonecalls by panicked residents, as the white, gleaming light danced high up in the atmosphere.

Theories abounded over what this could be – a failing missile test, a satellite breaking up in our atmosphere, or a check out from an alien spacecraft.

Spirals in space: The strange sighting looked like a Catherine Wheel as it span over Jordan, Isreal and other countries last night

The grainy footage shows the beam spinning and spiraling – possibly a missile breaking up in space

Nevertheless, the mysterious light does seem to be earth-based technology, with the the spiral of light looking quite equivalent to a Russian missile test which similarly scared men and women in Norway in 2009 with a light-show which seemed a lot more Doctor Who than anything else.

The event began at around 8:45pm in the evening, and after a few hours of panic, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said a test rocket had been launched just six minutes ahead of that time.

They named it a productive launch, although a leaked and then supressed video apparrently shows the missile starting to fail.

If this is the situation, then the spirals of light in the sky is fuel spewing out from the missile as it burns in a fierce cartwheel through the sky, producing the startling geocentric shapes.

Thousands of people in Israel, Turkey and Jordan got the shock of their lives yesterday, as they watched a spinning ‘UFO’ performing cartwheels in the sky. Police in these countries – as well as in Cyprus and Lebanon – were flooded with phonecalls by panicked residents, as the white, gleaming light danced high up in the atmosphere.